"The Omnivore's Dilemma," Michael Pollan's 2006 study of the origins of the foods Americans eat, is this year's selection in the UConn Reads program, whose goal is to get the entire campus community to read the same book and then discuss it in a variety of related events.

Two exhibits on campus — one at the William Benton Museum of Art, the other at the Contemporary Art Galleries (CAG) — focus on different aspects of Pollan's research. CAG zeroes in on foods that are actually food, such as chicken, pork, wheat, corn and full meals. The Benton focuses on sugary snacks created with high-fructose corn syrup.

Benton Museum

In his book, Pollan described humans as "processed corn, walking," because such a vast amount of food that humans eat every day started out as corn. One corn derivative that is almost impossible to avoid is high-fructose corn syrup.

That ubiquitous super-sweet processed food additive is represented at the Benton in an exhibit whose artworks seem too sweet, too processed, too far removed from any foods seen in nature, if these indeed can be called foods.

Peter Anton

Artwork by Peter Anton, part of the exhibit "Sweet Sensation: UConn reads "The Omnivore's Dilemma" at the Benton Museum in Storrs.

Artwork by Peter Anton, part of the exhibit "Sweet Sensation: UConn reads "The Omnivore's Dilemma" at the Benton Museum in Storrs. (Peter Anton)

Works by the wonderfully named sculptor Desire Obtain Cherish (aka Jonathan Paul) question contemporary Americans' inability to control their desire to obtain things that probably aren't good for them. In this exhibit, these would be Ring Pops, those gem-shaped lollipops mounted on rings, and stick lollipops, seen melting into puddles of shiny, colorful goo. These are explained by passages from the book, such as "as productive and protean as the corn plant is, finally it is a set of human choices that have made these molecules quite as cheaply as they have become."

Peter Anton, on the other hand, celebrates the nature of craving, with his wall-mounted sculptures of boxed chocolates and doughnuts. Margaret Morrison's oils-on-canvas of lollipops, glazed strawberries and chocolate cheesecake are alluring on the surface, even though the intensity of the colors ultimately make them seem dangerous.

Rachel Lee Hovnanian assembles cereal boxes in a pattern and sprinkles them with a glistening, granular coating, either a sugary paradise or nightmare. Pollan's comment: "In many ways breakfast cereal is the prototypical processed food: four cents' worth of commodity corn (or some other equally cheap grain) transformed into four dollars' worth of processed food. What an alchemy!"

Gina Beavers' "Food Porn" series of acrylics-and-pumice-on-canvas are as overstated as their title, a high-calorie mess of chicken and waffles and fatty-marbled cuts of lamb.

"These are a nice way to think of corn outside of sweets," said the exhibit's curator Jean Nihoul, a former New York City chef who did his master's thesis on food and art. "Corn is fed to chickens, corn is fed to cows, and it winds up in us."

Contemporary Art Galleries

Although the show at CAG isn't about candy and sweets, many of the artworks on exhibit call into question whether "real" foods — the ones families gather together to eat, with ingredients coming from the American factory-farming system — are good for us.

Melissa Eder calls her photographs of a Big Mac and French fries "Fave Foods." However, they could just as easily be called "Fake Foods," framed as they are on shocking-pink disposable plastic plates. John O'Donnell, in his installation of a DVD surrounded by food boxes, shows foods being made by machines, gears-a-grinding, using ingredients that are too brightly colored to be natural. O'Donnell came by the idea while shopping for groceries.

"I was thinking about which ones went well together," O'Donnell says in his artist statement. "I was making choices based on color and design, and then it struck me — this is what people do. They pick the foods they are going to eat based on what the packaging looks like."

Another bizarre juxtaposition was created in 1982, when artist Agnes Denes planted a wheat field on a landfill near the World Trade Center. Denes' crop created an incongruous melding of the Twin Towers next to farmland, a harvester working underneath the Manhattan skyline, a golden field with the Statue of Liberty in the background.

The polymer wall installation "Untitled (Mushrooms)" reflects artist Roxy Paine's fascination with mushrooms that have "the potential to alter mental states, or the potential to maim and kill." Paine's work hangs next to Simon Periton's enameled mushrooms, which look as fake as hers look real.

Mat Colishaw, however, turns the notion of "healthy" meals on its head, with his photos that recreate the menus requested by Texas Death Row inmates as their final meals. The artfully arranged and classically lit arrangements of grilled cheese sandwiches, French fries, boiled eggs, glazed cinnamon rolls and glasses of milk become tragic, the last bit of pleasure experienced by doomed men.

Frank Moore's painting is tragic as well, with a lot of irony. "Cocktail" shows a chicken inside a hypodermic needle, injecting some mysterious mixture into an ear of corn. The 2001 image is not just a commentary on the danger of chemical artificiality, but also an admission of its uses, too. Moore had AIDS, and died the following year. "He was being kept alive by chemicals he didn't believe in," said curator Barry Rosenberg.

THE OMNIVORE'S DILEMMA: VISUALIZED will be at Contemporary Art Gallery, in the Art and Art History building at 830 Bolton Road at University of Connecticut in Storrs, until April 25. "Sweet Sensation: UConn Reads 'The Omnivore's Dilemma'" will be at William Benton Museum of Art, 245 Glenbrook Road, at University of Connecticut in Storrs, until March 29. contemporaryartgalleries.uconn.edu/ and benton.uconn.edu.